When I played my role as part of the country of India, I felt like it was hard for all of the countries to meet at a common agreement as well as get the 2100 predicted temperature below 2 degrees Celsius. It was difficult for the larger countries to get what they wanted while also helping the developing nations as well as us out.
At the beginning of discussions, I was optimistic about our chances to bring the 2100 predicted temperature down as well as help the country of India get rid of its poverty. As discussions went on, I became more and more optimistic because everything that we tried was either rejected by the larger nations or did not do enough to decrease the 2100 predicted temperature. At the end, I realized that it is almost impossible to prevent climate change due to the many factors that go into stopping it.
Our group changed our ideas about half way through the discussion. We decided that 2040 was pretty late for our peak emissions, so we changed to 2035 and changed our start of reductions to 2040 from 2050. We decided to keep our reduction rate at 1% as well as our $30 billion though. We had decently reasonable requests, so we did not have to change much throughout the discussion.
This change was prompted by the fact that all of the other countries were peaking around 2030, so we felt that , even though we were not a huge factor in the rise of temperatures, we needed to help out a little bit.
In the end, I think that we can cut emissions, but we can not cut them enough and continue to prosper. To get rid of climate change, we will have to get rid of everything that helps us live our lives as we do. If we cut emissions completely, we will lose all of the advancements we’ve made across the world the last hundreds of years.
The main cost barrier we encountered was the fact that the other developing nations wanted $200 billion as well as our request for $30 billion. However, the other nations were not willing to offer that much, so we had to discuss, and the other developing nations decided to eventually drop their request down a little.
We can catalyze change in the US by beginning to cut emissions sooner rather than later. As we learned in the activity, waiting to cut emissions does not help out at all. The earlier we cut emissions, the lower the temperatures will be in the distant future.